On Monday, President Trump announced that he plans to kill the Obama-era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, which could have required suburbs to change single-family zoning to allow multifamily housing. This rule had been written by housing activists to make housing more affordable even though there was no evidence that single-family zoning made housing less affordable or that abolishing it would fix the problem.
“Far-left Washington bureaucrats,” Trump said, “are absolutely determined to eliminate single-family zoning, destroy the value of houses and communities already built, just as they have in Minneapolis and other locations. , , , Not going to happen, not while I’m here.”
The truth is that supporters of the rule have a hidden agenda: to stop urban sprawl, even though measures to stop sprawl are the real cause of housing affordability issues. This can be seen in the housing plank of Biden’s campaign platform, which calls for “eliminat[ing] exclusionary zoning policies and other local regulations that contribute to sprawl.” In fact, it is sprawl that keeps housing affordable, and it is only in urban areas that have tried to stop sprawl that housing has become unaffordable. Continue reading
